Aww ! Prof Gaziot says goodbye to us !

I received an email from my Project Management professor !
It's funny, I thought that he didn't really like the class since he told us how terrible our work was every time and there was constant chatter during his lectures. He was indeed one of my better professors here at RBS. He manages a company that sells airplanes, I believe, and managed to take time to teach us every week. Yay for Prof Gaziot !

a picture of him I found on his linkedin page

Dearest Students,

Next monday will be our last and final session together, and it will be a very busy one because of the study case recommandations which will have to be presented by you.

Just before it, let me tell you, how it has been a pleasure for me to work with you, during those last months, especially in this fantastic "international dynamic" made of all various, different and very interesting cultures...

Really, it has been a piece of luck for all of us!!!

So, even if every monday was not an easy day to start the week (-), (this is very true for some specific people...but no names in that mail...), I really hope and trust, it has been also an interesting time for you too...

However, I would like to take this opportunity, to wish you all the best for your future life (professional and personnal as well).

I must emphasize that I am very confident about your success and I will be happy to get some news about it and of course about you, by mail.

At least and to be honest, I will be also very proud to have, as well, a bit participated to this wonderfull project which is: YOUR SUCCESS!!!

Also to complete this mail, I want to wish a very good trip back to any International Student, I am sure you will have a lot of things to tell your respective families after this stay at Rouen Business School and about some real "funny Frenchies behaviors"...!!!

GOOD LUCK TO YOU!

Warm regards and
Very sincerly yours
PHILIPPE

Big Bang Project

To wrap up our Project Management class, Prof Gaziot assigned group presentations (6 people/group). Our case study (handed out as a packet) consisted of restructuring a company on its way downhill...fast. Each group selected a project manager (me !) who divided up the work. We had one week to finish the powerpoint, the Gantt, WBS's for everything, and the 10-pg. min business plan.

***
We met right away and quickly organized the work into 5 sections:
Management restructuring
Administration re-organization/internal communications
New marketing tactics/new company image
Financial department organization
Customer service department/client communication
***
There was some disagreement within my group on what the business plan should include, so I emailed the professor asking for clarification. He said...If you have listen my course, you must find everything...I took that to mean that the business plan should include everything noted here! As it turned out, I was right.
***
My group worked well together, and the Chinese students Aaron and Loïc made great Gantt charts for the project timelines and milestones, and also a new website homepage ! Sadly, though, the Indian girl seemed to have copied and pasted most of her financial part from wikipedia, but at least that was just for the powerpoint and not the written part, and since class was ending she skipped most of it during the presentation.
***


Here is our big Gantt chart for the entire project. Click on it to enlarge.

The Essentials of Project Management

The Essentials of Project Management is
always a class I look forward to.
***
It is held Monday mornings from 9-noon and is taught entirely in English by a French CEO (I have to double check his position, but he works for an airplane company). His English is pretty good (he has a huge vocabulary). He also expresses his disapproval of our in-class activity presentations with colorful English and French! Our activity groups have to present what we each worked on. We all usually do not meet his standards of performance. We usually accomplish no more than to making scheeeet.
***
Overall, this is one of my best courses. The lectures are good.
The professor makes powerpoints outlining his lesson and gives numerous examples. If you don't understand an example (which has been the case for me several times now), he tries another one and another one until you get it. Most of the examples have to do with organizing a project to build a plane (engine, landing gear, interior comfort, etc)!
***
As with all classes in France, no matter the year/level it seems, the students talk constantly. The professors cannot control the students, and most make a very weak effort to do so. My project management professor, on the other hand, is indeed a little more intimidating than the average, and manages to provoke about 5 minutes of silence at a time instead of the usual 1 minute.

Examens !

Today was the first test in our Français des affaires course.

After I spent hours reviewing the 3 dossiers and 15 chapters from the course workbook because the professor stressed the need to know all the vocab, the test turned out to be 6 fill in the blanks, a couple matching, one short definition, and a huuuge commentaire de graphique. This part only actually required knowledge of every day vocab words such as fluctuate (fluctuer), stagnate (stagner), drop (chuter), etc.
I am not necessarily disappointed that the test was so easy, but rather that it only covered a small, small portion of what we did in the workbook*. More importance seemed to be placed on knowing how to say "up" and "down" than on knowing the difference between different types of sociétés.

Last week I had a test in Essentials of Project Management as well.
It consisted of 10 essay questions. At first we all (the foreign students, but the French students too!) thought it was an open-book test, so we took out our notes. Then some goodie-two-shoes announced to the professor (who wasn't paying enough attention to notice everyone using notes) that, maybe some foreign students didn't understand, it's not an open-book test. So we were all told to put our notes away, and reminded that we were not five years old.
***
Then the professor left the room to answer his cell phone, which of course lead to masses amounts of answers being swapped as fast of possible. I would like to add, here, that I was one of the few students who did not actively seek or give answers. ;)
The professor returned after 2 minutes. What I find interesting is that he did not notice the entire silent classroom start to move and buzz before he had even made it out the door, and that it took a couple seconds for it to calm down again once he reopened the door and proceeded to sit at his desk.
After an hour and a half, we turned in our tests and took a 15 minute break. Upon returning to class, the professor announced that one honest student informed him that everyone had cheated like little children on the test and that he shouldn't have to babysit us and as a result, we were going to re-do anther essay test instead of having a lecture. This actually turned out to be in my favor, since I couldn't answer several of the questions on the original test (see, I left them blank, I didn't cheat). The new test only had two questions: describe a business plan and what does it consist of.
***
This week he returned our tests and said he had been "generous" with marks. I think the lowest grade (and I know what everyone's grade was because the professor announced them as he handed back papers) 10,5/20. This is just above the "average" cut-off (11/20 is considered "acceptable", 15/20 is "good!", 18/20 is "excellent!"). I found it interesting to note that 10 or so of the 13 Chinese students in the class got between 14-16, the highest grades.


* the amazing workbook must be stressed as the main learning tool in F.d.A. since only 15 minutes per class period (2x a week) is dedicated to correcting the exercises and the rest of the time to listening to personal stories from the professor on unrelated topics.